Freedom is in Our DNA. Or Not.

So? Why not? Many traits are now known to be heritable, including intelligence, aggression, extroversion, agreeableness, and openness.

This does not mean these traits are absolutely determined by genes. If I understand the concept rightly, heritability is a measure of the observed differences -- the variation -- in a population that can be attributed to genes. Yeah, I could just look it up, but why would I want to yield to an expert?

Okay, "heritability of a trait is the square of the coefficient of G in a linear approximation to the surface GxE to trait." Thanks for the tip!

It's a somewhat slippery concept, since it measures "relative contributions of genetic and non-genetic differences to the total phenotypic [observable] variation in a population," but "is not the same as saying that this fraction of an individual phenotype is caused by genetics." Thus, as Wade points out, "genes don't determine human behavior; they merely create a propensity to behave in a certain way."

So much for homosexuality being caused by genes. Oh well. There's always nurture, i.e., environmental deprivation or trauma.

It brings to mind what one of the early fathers said about astrology: the stars incline, but do not compel.

As to the genes that influence aggression, Wade mentions that -- come a little closer, I'm gonna have to whisper this -- "African Americans are more likely to carry the violence-linked allele of MAO-A promoters than are Caucasians," but this does not -- {gulp} -- imply "that one race is genetically more prone to violence than any other." For one thing, there are no doubt yet-to-be discovered gene sequences that muddy the issue and account for the intrinsic racism of white Europeans.

Besides, as any liberal knows, "people who live in conditions of poverty and unemployment may have more inducements to violence than those who are better off."

O.o

Which is no doubt why white collar crime doesn't exist, and why the wealthy 1% are the Best People in the World.

At any rate, since genes don't determine any human behavior, this implies that we are always free. If we are always free, this implies that we transcend our genetic programming. Thus, to suggest that "freedom is in our DNA" is slightly oxymoronic, for it would be like saying that "freedom is determined." But to the extent that freedom exists, it can only be permitted, not compelled.

Wait, I'm confused. Animals don't have free will. So, how does freedom get into -- or escape from -- the genome? Or, what happened to the genome that permitted freedom to manifest?

Maybe I'm not asking or conceptualizing this in the right way, because it strikes me as Very Weird. Take an ant, for example. Would we not say that roughly 100% of any (minimal) variation we see between two ants is attributable to genes? Or in other words, there is no freedom.

But even the most heritable human trait still leaves us with a margin of freedom. Where did this margin come from?

Well, it comes from God, of course, since we are talking about a vertical margin. I don't see any other way to account for it, especially because this is not a blank or "empty" freedom, but rather, a "structured" freedom. Yes, our freedom is under constraint, but it is not genetic constraint but moral constraint.

These constraints are, on the one hand, given by God (e.g., the Ten Commandments), but on the other, discoverable by our natural reason.

However, it very much appears to me that our natural reason has improved over the millennia, so there was clearly a time that we needed those Ten Commandments handed down from on high, because most men could not discover them with their natural reason.

This is something I've been thinking about while reading Stark's How the West Won. In particular, the sadistic violence of past humans is just so over the top that they might as well be a different species (which implies that our contemporary Islamist sadists are swimming in their own private idahole).

Examples are far too numerous and too gross to chronicle, but just consider how much the Romans loved their inconceivably violent spectacles, as if they had absolutely no capacity for empathy. "Besides being fed to wild animals, people were executed in the arenas in a variety of sadistic ways -- flogging, burning, skinning, impaling, dismemberment, and even crucifixion."

In other words, crucifixion was entertainment, whereas today liberals wet their pants at the thought of some worthless convicted sadist suffering for even a moment. How do we get from the one to the other, and why do liberals, like the Romans, empathize with the sadist and not the victim?

The larger point is that in the not-too-distant past, human beings did not have to struggle with their conscience over, say, torturing animals for fun. There are still people who are like this, but it is one of the hallmarks of sociopathy, of an antisocial personality disorder (which in turn seems to be under heavy genetic influence).

Does this mean that most people in the past had what we now call antisocial personality disorder? Yes and no, since they lived in an environment that normalized such things. In that environment, someone who opposed torture on principle would stand out.

Indeed, Stark says that there is no recorded evidence of any ancient civilization uttering a peep about slavery being problematic. To me, this again implies an absence of empathy. Slaveholders might concede the humanness of the slave, but only in an abstract way. It is as if they could not put themselves in the position of the other and thereby say to themselves, "this is intrinsically wrong."

Oh, by the way. There are still some 30 million slaves in the world, the vast majority in Muslim countries, central Africa, and the Democratic Party. Not that there's anything wrong with it, because Diversity.

To be continued...